A familiar horror reached Pooja Kanda first on social media: There had been a sword attack in London. And then Kanda, who was home alone at the time, saw a detail she dreaded and knew all too well.
A man with a sword had killed a 14-year-old boy who was walking to school. Two years ago, her 16-year-old son, Ronan, was killed by two sword-wielding schoolmates while walking to a neighbor’s to borrow a PlayStation controller.
“It took me back,” Kanda, who lives near Birmingham, said about Daniel Anjorin’s April 30 killing in an attack in London’s Hainault district that also wounded four people. “It’s painful to see that this has happened all over again.”
In parts of the world that ban or strictly regulate gun ownership, including Britain and much of the rest of Europe, knives and other types of blades are often the weapons of choice used in crimes. Many end up in the hands of children, as they can be cheap and easy to get.
The US public and Congress have been making a mistake for 40 years by getting distracted by the “how” and not focusing on addressing the “why”.
Don’t make the same mistake.
You can both engage in immediate harm reduction while also working towards solutions to poverty and deprivation.
Providing for people’s needs will be the most effective way to reduce the violent crime rate… But it won’t go away entirely. Ever. Some people have their heads screwed on backwards. Some people have fringe religious ideologies that encourage violence. Some people are raging alcoholics even with money and security - they’ll commit domestic violence no matter how wealthy they are.
None of them should own guns.
When politicians are looking to score points with the public will they enact expensive social safety nets, or will they push for cheap and quick weapon bans?
Do politicians care about efficacy, or do they care about appearing to take action?
If a person’s goal is to reduce homicides the means need to be decoupled from the argument. It’s highly counterintuitive, but four decades of US domestic policy have proven that if the means of homicide are a part of the discussion politicians will focus on it in order to look like they’re doing something without spending enormous amounts of taxpayer money - efficacy be damned.
It seems to me that politicians on one side in the U.S. are against a social safety net and gun control and the other side are in favor of a social safety net and gun control. So your argument really doesn’t make much sense. Who are these politicians who are pro-universal healthcare but anti-strengthening gun regulations?
You’re missing the point, none of them really want the social safety nets, that would kill the wedge issue. Keeping people arguing about gun control drives political engagement and votes. Both parties have a vested interest in not resolving the issue. Actually solving the problem would be a nightmare for them.
Look, if you want to spend the rest of your life watching your elected officials chase symptoms in order to drum up funds and votes, go right ahead. Just don’t say you weren’t warned when you let them get away with it.
Many bills that have been submitted suggest otherwise.
And how did those bills go?
Congress loves to let issues fester to garner attention and drum up support. They’ve been fucking around with the debt ceiling for decades to do that, and that’s a problem that they create from whole cloth.
The political will of the populace to make real changes to address the root causes of homicide are squandered by focusing on the weapons used. Want to see those bills pass? Don’t buy into the dog and pony show that is gun control.
If you really, truly believe that banning guns is the silver bullet to solving homicides get the second amendment repealed. All the half measures that get thrown out time and time again are usually unconstitutional and doomed to fail, they’re just there to keep the public engaged.
So… you’re saying that because Democratic bills put forward to increase the safety social net get voted down by Republicans, Democrats don’t want a social safety net?
And here is where I know you are not here in good faith. You are conflating the two as if they were the same thing, or that everyone who proposes the former actually wants the latter.
Ok?
Tell yourself whatever makes you feel better about getting played by political candidates.
Approximately the same number of people die from gun homicides as homelessness in the USA.
I don’t want to solve either/or - I want to solve both.
And while deprivation is a common root they have other uncommon causes that need addressing. The gun craze of America needs to be clamped down on and regulated.
We have the ability to do both. Why would you argue against one?
Because the gun laws in place are about as far as things can go without repealing the second amendment. Further laws are either doomed to fail or make only marginal differences.
Those bills and proposals waste precious political capital that could otherwise be used passing laws that address the root causes of homicide.
Okay, what’s the ‘why’ of killing significantly more people during such attacks? Because it seems to me like simply having the ability to do so with a gun when it’s far more difficult to do so with a knife is part of the why.
Buddy, you’re obsessing over the means. Focus on motive.
I’d rehash the same points about how a person can commit mass murder with a car, but for guys like you talking about murder weapons is like being a pig in shit.
You didn’t answer my question:
You can claim people commit mass murder like that with a car, but can you show that car mass murders come even close to events like the Pulse nightclub attack, the Las Vegas mass shooting or Uvalde?
So, again, what is the why?
Yeah, I didn’t answer your question.
I’m refusing to give you what you want.
You’ve been warned that this is an exercise in futility. I won’t engage in it no matter how much you want to.
It is indeed an exercise in futility when someone refuses to answer the question of why after telling that person that they’re not focusing on the why.